Ah, Nautilus, GNOME's default file manager. It's been with us for a long time now, and it has certainly been at the centre of a number of controversies. Do we go with a spatial or a navigational Nautilus? Should we replace the location bar with a breadcrumb bar? And now, it's time to move on. Recently, it has become apparent to many that Nautilus could use a make-over.

If there is added complexity it is because too much of the functionality is hardcoded into the GUI. Bad design. Only a poor design would introduce complexity when adding an Up button.

The post I was responding to wasn't asking for an Up button, but for a fully customisable toolbar - something I'm sure you'd agree involves a *lot* of complexity, all of it in the UI layer.

For example, factor out the commands into command objects. Just the layering itself reduces complexity. Then you can apply different GUIs to the same backend.

Adding layering doesn't reduce complexity, just hides it in the code supporting those layers. It makes the UI code easier to work with, but adds a big piece of complexity for managing your command objects and widgets, and the connections between them.

Now that's obviously a good thing, in that it makes changing the UI easier. But you've not removed the complexity, just moved it into some new package that will invariably end up labeled "Black magic performed here - do not touch!".

That's why you have reusability. Customizable toolbars have been standard for KDE since almost the beginning. I'm somewhat surprised that GNOME doesn't have anything like it. But even without it, it's not that huge of a deal. At least not enough to get all pissy with the user about.

Its not like the rest of gnome wasn't built modular. Nor is it treading on new water as most of what I mentioned has been done one time or another for gnome! It would be adding consistency to their design to build a customizable toolbar, toggle modes, multiple views in the same window, etc.